The Fifth-Floor Window

In the autumn of my seventeenth year, my family moved into a cramped flat on the fifth floor of a Soviet-era building in the outskirts of Vilnius. The place had a permanent chill, as if the radiators never fully warmed the concrete walls. My parents, practical people, dismissed my unease. They said it was just the draft from the old windows. But I knew better. From the first night, I could feel something watching from the far corner of my room, near the radiator, where the wallpaper peeled in long, grey strips.

It started with a sound I mistook for a faulty pipe: a slow, rhythmic hiss. But it wasn’t water. It was breathing. I would lie in bed, frozen, listening to it inhale and exhale with a steady, almost human cadence. It came at 4 AM, like clockwork, and lasted until the first grey light crept through the curtains. I never told my parents. I was sure it was my imagination, a product of too many late-night horror films. But then my cat, a skinny tabby named Milda, began to behave strangely. She would stare at that corner, her fur bristling, and hiss at nothing. One night, she leapt from my bed and bolted into the hallway, refusing to return. That was the first time I truly felt cold, not from the wind, but from a deeper chill inside my bones.

My mother, a quiet woman with nerves of steel, claimed to have seen a man standing in her doorway one night, silhouetted against the dim light of the hallway. He was tall, featureless, and just stood there, breathing. She couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, just lay there until the sun rose. My father woke to the sound of a child crying in the living room, though none was there. They joked about it, blaming the old building, but their laughter was thin, and they started sleeping with the lights on.

I tried to ignore it, but the breathing grew louder. It no longer stayed in the corner. Some nights, it seemed to come from under my bed, or from inside the wardrobe. One night, I woke to find Milda sitting on my chest, staring at the door. The breathing was so loud I could feel it on my skin. I pulled the blanket over my head, as if that would protect me. And then, a voice, soft and feminine, whispered through the fabric: ‘I see you.’

I screamed. Or I tried to, but no sound came out. I was paralyzed. I could feel something pressing down on my chest, heavier than the cat. My heart thundered, and I could hear my own breath, ragged and panicked, mixing with the calm, tranquil rhythm of the other. The voice came again, closer: ‘You can hear me now.’

When I finally managed to move, I flung the blanket aside. The room was empty. The breathing had stopped. But on the window, which faced the courtyard five floors below, there was a smear of condensation, as if someone had pressed their face against the glass from outside. I ran to the window, but no one was there. Just the empty streetlights and the wind.

The next morning, I told my parents everything. My mother went pale. My father tried to laugh it off, but he wouldn’t look at me. That evening, we all sat in the kitchen, the lights on, pretending to watch TV. The breathing didn’t come back for a week. We almost believed it was over.

But then, a new sound started. It was a tapping on the window. Not a branch, not a bird. It was rhythmic, deliberate. And it came every night, at the same hour, 4 AM. We lived on the fifth floor. There was no ledge, no tree, no way anyone could reach that window. But the tapping would persist until sunrise, and then vanish.

One night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled back the curtain and looked out. There, pressed against the glass, was a face. A woman’s face, pale, with hollow eyes, and her lips were moving, forming words I couldn’t hear. I stumbled back, but the face followed, as if she were floating outside. I grabbed my phone and called for my parents. When they came, the face was gone. But I saw the look in my mother’s eyes. She had seen it too.

We moved out two weeks later. We never spoke of it again. But even now, far from that flat, I sometimes wake at 4 AM to the sound of quiet, rhythmic breathing, coming from the corner of my bedroom. And I know, with a certainty that chills me to the core, that the Breather followed me. It found me in my new home, in my new city, and it is waiting. Waiting for me to sleep, so it can breathe with me. And one night, I’m afraid, it will speak again.